


Eros, and Other Love Stories

by FullmetalChords



Series: In Regards to Love [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality Spectrum, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Falling In Love, Four Kinds of Love, Internalized Acephobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 03:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11199141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullmetalChords/pseuds/FullmetalChords
Summary: Eros. Yuuri understands it in theory, of course. He’s seen what must be hundreds of movies about the very topic, but never really understood them. Never understood why the protagonists of these films make such fools of themselves for sex, or why they fall head over heels in love with the first pretty face they see. He nods and smiles and sighs along with the rest of them… but he’s never related to those characters’ struggles. Not even a little.What iswrongwith him?--A character study of Japan's ace, Katsuki Yuuri.





	Eros, and Other Love Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DefiantDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefiantDreams/gifts).



> Dedicated to Essa (defiantdreams) as an early birthday gift. Happy birthday, my sweet child. Thank you for being so amazing and talented. ♥ An ENORMOUS thanks as well to spookyfoot for being my informal beta and holding my hand as I wrestled with the anxiety about whether to post this fic. 
> 
> As a sapphic ace, I felt an immediate kinship with Yuuri the first time I watched this series and saw him struggle with the idea of what it meant to be sexy. This fic was the result, though it got much farther away from me than I thought it would. (I've been writing this for THREE MONTHS, and it's technically still not finished.)
> 
> Needless to say, my notion of gay ace Yuuri is a headcanon, but it's one that's very dear to me and other ace fans of YOI that I've spoken to. Should you choose to read on, all I ask is that you respect that. And yes, this IS a fic about Victor and Yuuri falling in (romantic) love, though it might look different from a lot of other love stories.

_\------------------------------_

 

_Eros: love as a fundamental creative impulse, often having a sensual element._

 

 

No one believes him when he says the posters were innocent.

Not Mari, when she finds him pinning the seventeenth one to his wall. Not Phichit, when he spies the framed photograph that Yuuri keeps on his desk in Detroit. “I got you two copies in case you get one dirty,” Mari smirks. “Just give me a heads up when you and Victor want some alone time,” winks Phichit.

But it’s never been like that for Yuuri.

There’s always been a part of Yuuri that’s drawn to beauty. The aching clear teal of the ocean in summer. The softness of spring’s first flowers. The delicate glide over fresh ice, long silver hair flowing through the air like water.

None of these are things for Yuuri to keep. They will linger for a minute, an hour, before flitting away again, hovering just out of reach. The way they make him feel… he spends hours, weeks, months, trying to hold onto that soft feeling, that sensation of beauty, trying to recreate it in the mirror on Minako’s wall. Wondering if he can have the power to make others feel that way, too.

He collects the posters because Victor is beautiful to look at — but that’s all Yuuri feels compelled to do, _look_. The very idea of using the posters for anything else – the way Nishigori assumes, sometimes loudly, that Yuuri must touch himself at night while looking into icy blue eyes – makes him shrink. Yuuri had thought he might become less squeamish about the notion as he got older, by the time the rest of his classmates started to pair off.

But he never does.

It isn’t that Victor is a boy, either. It seems Yuuri must have spent most of his life drifting through the world, looking for beauty, and he knows what kind of person he’s more drawn to. The girls in his class are nice, but that’s all. Some of the boys have lovely eyes, gentle hands, and he finds his eyes lingering sometimes. But again, that’s all. There is little impulse to hold, to keep, something that is by nature so transient.

There is Yuuko-chan, at the rink. Yuuko-chan is pretty.

But Victor Nikiforov, with his grace, and his charm, and his eyes as deep and blue as Hasetsu’s sea?

Victor Nikiforov is the most beautiful person Yuuri has ever seen.

 

\--

 

In Japan, Yuuri calls himself ゲイ. It’s the closest term he has to describe how he feels.

America has a _lot_ more words. Words for who you’re attracted to, words for how you’re attracted to them, words for degrees of attraction or non-attraction. Infinite words for ways to express your gender – Yuuri hadn’t even known anything existed beyond “man” and “woman”, or that people’s genders and their bodies might be different.

It makes his head spin. None of this had even _existed_ in tiny, traditional Hasetsu.

In America, there is skating with Celestino, college coursework, more classes to perfect his English conversation… and there is Phichit. Phichit is three years younger than he is, barely sixteen when he moves to Detroit. But the second he finds out about the Spectrum Center for LGBT students at U.Mich, he makes Yuuri drag him there, exclaiming that his high school doesn’t even have an active GSA chapter. And Phichit’s ebullience, as always, brings Yuuri into his orbit, dragging him along for the ride.

The people at Spectrum _love_ Phichit. He’s by far the youngest there, but he makes up for it with his exuberant presence, telling jokes that make everyone laugh, even if they’re full of puns that don’t translate well from Thai to English. The Americans embrace him as their collective younger sibling. They ask him questions about how progressive Bangkok _really_ is for trans people and try to get his recommendations for decent Thai food in Ann Arbor. Phichit begs the girls for makeup tips and organizes group movie nights so they can watch _The King and the Skater_ together _._ It’s easy for him to get along with them, like it’s easy for Phichit to get along with everyone.

Yuuri finds it harder.

“What pronouns do you prefer?” is one of the first questions the Americans ask him. The idea of gendered third-person pronouns barely exists in his native tongue, and he had no idea that English had ones other than “he” or “she”. They ask the group to share first crushes, and Yuuri stays quiet, too embarrassed to bring up the Victor posters — if that counts as a crush at all — and have all these strangers tease him with masturbation jokes yet again. They ask him how he labels himself, and he’s still too confused by the minefield of Western LGBT culture, with its multitude of different identities, to say anything other than “gay”.

The Spectrum people are kind, welcoming, open in a way he doesn’t think he’ll ever be used to. But Yuuri always finds himself ill at ease sitting in that rainbow-filled student center, for some reason. Out of place. He shies away when they try to hug him, keeps quiet when the subject of Pride comes up.

This is where he’s supposed to belong. So why is he still so uncomfortable?

He stops going to Spectrum meetings after a few months, even though Phichit complains. He spends more time on the rink, in the ballet studio, going back to his old routine of passively observing beauty, of privately trying to recreate it for himself so it might not slip through his fingers so quickly.

It doesn’t matter, he reasons, what kind of person he finds beautiful.

Not when the idea of beauty remains so far out of reach.

 

\--

 

Nothing sums up this conundrum more perfectly than Victor Nikiforov.

Victor’s beauty on the ice has captivated Yuuri unlike anything else, ever since he was young. In his pursuit of beauty, it seems Victor has always been the ideal he’s been chasing. It’s why he started skating seriously in the first place, in the hopes that he might become as beautiful as Victor Nikiforov. That he might, someday, be able to show his own beauty to Victor and to the world, to finally be seen as Victor’s equal.

(He knows by now he never could, because Katsuki Yuuri is anything but beautiful, no matter how hard he wishes otherwise. But the stubborn child in him has never been able to let the dream go.)

That’s what the posters are for, more than anything else. Inspiration. A reminder of why he skates in the first place, the virtue he hopes to embody. Something Yuuri can spend his life chasing, if never quite catching.

The Sisyphean nature of his struggle has never been clearer than at Sochi. The first time he’s ever been able to share the stage with Victor.

Clearly, it will also be his last.

Seeing Victor in person after the disaster that was his free skate is the final dagger. The eyes from his posters looking directly at Yuuri, taking him for the pathetic wannabe he is. _A commemorative photo? Sure!_ It makes sense, of course. Yuuri could never stand on his level. Could never captivate Victor for even a moment, even though Victor has captivated Yuuri for half his life.

He walks away from those bright blue eyes, giving up on ever trying to hold his attention again.

 

\--

 

But clearly, something has gone cosmically wrong. Because all of a sudden Victor Nikiforov, five-time World Champion, has sprung off his walls and turned up, three-dimensional, in Yuuri’s _house_ , and he’s vowing to coach him.

While stark naked.

The fact that Yuuri doesn’t literally die from embarrassment is an _actual miracle._

 

\--

 

No matter how hard Yuuri blinks, Victor is still there. Eating his mother’s katsudon. Skating his programs in Ice Castle Hasetsu. Even, of all things, pounding on Yuuri’s bedroom door in the middle of the night, asking to sleep with him.

“No!” is the only word he can say, the word torn from his throat in sheer panic. If having Victor in his _house_ makes his heart pound in terror, he can only imagine what having the other man in his _bed_ might do.

(What _would_ he do, with Victor in his bed? What would Victor want to do with _him_?)

The flesh-and-blood Victor in his house, under his roof, is nothing at all like the calm serenity emanating from Yuuri’s posters, that placid image of beauty Yuuri has spent more than a decade absorbing. Victor is loud, impulsive, enthusiastic about the most ordinary things. Enthusiastic about _Yuuri_ , who is the most ordinary thing of all.

Too bad that realization doesn’t make Yuuri’s sense of complete denial go away.

That first night, his heart won’t stop pounding. It takes him hours, hours spent tossing and turning in his sheets, before he realizes that feeling isn’t his usual anxiety, but _happiness_. That video. Victor had seen something in his skating after all. Something he wanted to pursue.

Yuuri has never been pursued before. It’s almost intoxicating.

 

\--

 

Of all the themes to give him for his short program, Victor has to give Yuuri _eros._

Mari thinks it’s _hilarious_.

“Now you don’t need those posters anymore,” she tells Yuuri with a grin one night, in Japanese so Victor and Yurio won’t overhear. “You’ve got the real thing around to inspire you.” She winks at her little brother almost salaciously.

Yuuri is too mortified to respond.

 _Eros_. Sexual desire. He understands it in theory, of course. He’s seen what must be hundreds of movies about the very topic, ranging from the sweeping romantic dramas his mother loves to the raunchy Judd Apatow movies Phichit loves to mock. Yuuri’s watched them all, but never really understood them. Never understood why the protagonists of these films make such fools of themselves for sex, or why they fall head over heels in love with the first pretty face they see. He nods and smiles and sighs along with the rest of them… but he’s never related to those characters’ struggles. Not even a little.

The short program Victor has created tells a clear story: a debonair drifter who sweeps into a town, seducing its most beautiful woman, before immediately tossing her aside, his desire satisfied. Yuuri can see the story on an academic level, like it’s one of his mother’s films.

It’s the emotional component, usually Yuuri’s hallmark, that’s completely missing.

Victor seems to think it’s a matter of confidence. He says as much that first morning on the ice, right before he leans in too close, brushing the pad of his thumb against Yuuri’s lower lip, murmuring something about Yuuri _showing him his true eros soon._ It’s a come-on, but a calculated one to make Yuuri believe he’s sexually desirable, designed to boost his ego. Not that it has the intended effect.

For all Yuuri knows what Victor wants him to do, he can’t see any of himself in the story Victor has made for him. He finds himself utterly unable to comprehend sexual desire, much less portray it when he skates.

And _that’s_ strange in and of itself, isn’t it? He’s not a child; he’s twenty-three. He shouldn’t still find the idea of sex so abstract, so… impersonal. Or at least, it shouldn’t be so obvious to everyone that the whole idea confuses him, that he’s never even had a _crush_ in his entire life. He doesn’t count his admiration of Victor as a crush, because Victor’s always been so far away, so unreachable. He might as well have fallen in love with the moon.

He knows he’ll never convince the crowd that this… this _eros_ is part of him, any more than he can convince them he has a second head. 

So Yuuri does what he always does when stuck: he goes looking for inspiration.

He feels like an idiot when his first stop is Googling “eros”. He reads about the Greek god with his arrows, creating insatiable sexual impulses in mortals. He notes some book Plato wrote about “platonic Eros,” which seems like such an oxymoronic term that he ignores that search result altogether. He finds articles about the Greek concepts that Victor has based his and Yurio’s short programs on; the entries go on at length about _philia, storge,_ and _agape,_ but don’t say much about _eros_ other than that it is synonymous with sexual attraction.

It certainly doesn’t make it any clearer to him what he should _want_ for this program, how he should be trying to connect to it.

In a fit of desperation – and before he can talk himself out of doing what he’s doing – he visits a porn site in the hopes it might _inspire_ him. Wearing headphones late at night, his bedroom door locked, Yuuri looks for videos of two men together. And does he ever find them. In bedrooms, locker rooms, classrooms. One, in the bed of a truck. And once Yuuri gets past the initial humiliation that he’s actually _doing this_ , in his _parents’ house,_ he finds that he feels…

Well… nothing.

The nudity doesn’t shock him for long, especially after growing up in an onsen. Even the intimacy of what the men in the videos do together doesn’t faze him much, especially since some pairs seem more interested in putting on a show for the camera than actually connecting with their partner. But, as Yuuri realizes somewhere around the fourth video, people don’t watch porn to get _embarrassed._ They do it to get _off_. Yet he’s sitting here, watching (admittedly very attractive) strangers on the internet fuck, and if he had to name what he’s feeling, he might use the word “bored”.

People aren’t supposed to feel that way about sex. Are they?

He scrolls through images of handsome men, naked and erect, giving the camera bedroom eyes. Feels almost nothing. Does the same for women just in case he’s been wrong all these years about what he likes, and feels even more indifferent.

Yuuri scrubs his browser history, shuts off his computer, lies back on his bed. The posters of Victor are gone from his wall, ripped down in a fit of embarrassment once the real thing showed up at his house; but he closes his eyes, pulling up the mental image of Victor in the onsen, winking confidently at him. Tries to picture that same Victor, naked and dripping, in bed with him now.

Does the idea excite him at all?

 

\--

 

“I get it now! Katsudon! That’s what Eros is to me!”

Yeah, it makes Yurio scoff at him, makes Victor give him a tight, almost pained smile. Yes, it’s enough to send Yuuri fleeing from the house, beyond embarrassed by his immaturity.

But the truth is, the Hot Springs on Ice event is only a few days away, and he’s no closer to understanding sexual desire than he’s been for the first twenty-three years of his life. His disastrous internet searches have only left him feeling more confused than ever before.

His love of katsudon might not be sexual, but it is _desire_ , of sorts. The craving for rich food drives him to accomplish things worth spoiling his diet for. And the need for certain comfort foods _have_ made him act wholly against his better judgment, the way Eros’s mythical arrows did the mortals in the stories.

At this point, he’ll take whatever inspiration he can get his hands on, if it will keep Victor with him.

 

\--

 

Even in front of this friendly crowd, Yuuri is terrified.

He’s already decided this will be the last skating season of his career. One last chance to pursue his dreams before he decides to wake up, to join the real world. But Yurio has found his agape and Yuuri still doesn’t have the first clue about eros, which means Yurio will win which means _Victor will leave_ and and and –

“Yuuri.”

He looks up into those blue eyes, so close to his own. And Victor has been closer to Yuuri before, has touched and flirted with him, but something about this moment feels _real_. Like Victor could be more than just the untouchable idol on his walls.

“I’m…” Yuuri can’t find his voice. “I’m going to become a super tasty katsudon, so… so please watch me.” In desperation and nerves, he flings his arms around Victor’s neck. His body is warm against Yuuri’s. “You will, w-won’t you?”

_It’s meaningless if you don’t. I’m trying to keep your interest. Please just give me this one chance to, before you leave._

“Of course,” he hears Victor say in his ear, and it’s not the practiced purr of seduction, not the detached instruction of a coach. “I love katsudon.” He sounds… Yuuri isn’t sure. Like there’s more Victor isn’t saying.

He slips his skate guards off, glides onto the rink. In the center of the rink, he can still feel Victor’s warm breath in his ear, still hear those veiled words. _I love katsudon._ He feels those eyes burning into him from Victor’s place rinkside.

Yuuri still doesn’t know what Victor wants from him. He doesn’t know what he wants from Victor, either. But for now, he has his idol’s eyes on him. Finally has a chance to captivate him, just once, the way he’s always dreamed.

Yuuri won’t give Victor the chance to look away again.

_Who am I skating for?_

_I know who._

 

\--

 

That’s how his debut of _On Love: Eros_ goes. Fuelled by muscle memory and a desperate wish to hold Victor’s attention.

The performance – and that’s all it is, a performance – lasts two and a half minutes. Yuuri can do _anything_ for two and a half minutes, he reasons, no matter how anxious it might make him, or how out-of-character it might feel.

And it wouldn’t be a problem, except that Victor keeps staring at him long after he gets off the ice. When he’s thanking the crowd for their support. When they’re eating their celebratory katsudon bowls later that evening. There’s a soft, almost dreamy look in Victor’s eyes when they linger on Yuuri, like his thoughts are fond, and maybe a little dirty.

It makes Yuuri’s mouth go dry. Looks like the show worked too well.

“Whatever you think of me,” he tells Victor, after swallowing a mouthful of pork and rice, “I’m not really the femme fatale. I don’t chase. I don’t… seduce.” The whole reason he played a femme fatale, in fact, was to act as a complement to Victor’s playboy character when _he_ skated the program, trying to send Victor the message that Yuuri could be his equal. He’d thought that much was obvious, but looking at Victor, it’s clear his message hasn’t found its mark yet.

One of Victor’s perfect eyebrows rises.

“Are you saying you prefer to _be_ seduced, Yuuri?” he asks, and there’s that flirty edge to his voice again that makes Yuuri so nervous, for reasons he’s never liked to examine.

“No,” he says hurriedly, “no no no, I…” He clutches, compulsively, at the fabric covering his knees, like he can stop his hands from shaking. “I just mean… that program’s just a _story_ , right. It’s not real. It’s not _me_.”

Victor snorts at that, and Yuuri looks up in spite of himself.

“What’s so funny?”

Victor shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, and he doesn’t actually look amused, now that Yuuri gets a better look at his expression. He looks… strangely nostalgic. “Yuuri, our sport is about pushing yourself past your comfort zone. You can’t succeed unless you do. Surely you know that much by now.”

Yuuri’s spent most of his career – most of his life, period – staying firmly within that comfort zone. He says nothing.

“It will get easier,” Victor continues. “With practice. This is a side of yourself that perhaps you’re unsure about, but by the end of the season, it may well feel as natural as your own skin.”

He offers Yuuri a brilliant smile from across the table before turning back to his food. Yuuri has no idea what to say.

“So I just need to… try harder,” he murmurs to himself, and his stomach sinks through the floor as he says it. He thinks with dread about diving back into his late-night research, as though, if he finds the right explanation, the right video, the right mental image, he might finally understand this whole sex thing.

But it’s either that, or come up with a different short program… and rejecting Victor’s beautiful choreography, forcing him to start from scratch just because Yuuri’s uncomfortable, is unthinkable.

Victor doesn’t appear to hear him, sighing with pleasure as he takes another bite of pork cutlet, humming _vkusno!_ to himself. Yuuri takes his own bite of katsudon, and finds he can barely taste it for the dryness of his mouth.

 

\--

 

The weeks progress, and Victor is still, miraculously, at his side.

Yuuri’s free skate is its own can of worms, bringing its share of anxiety with the responsibility Victor places on him and the vulnerability he demands; but it’s much easier for him to access emotionally, since he’s skating his own story. The short program, however, remains elusive, even if Victor doesn’t seem to realize that he still struggles with the idea of sexiness. Yuuri’s performance from Hot Springs on Ice seems to still have Victor fully convinced that that side of Yuuri exists somewhere.

He doesn’t see the way Yuuri runs to Minako’s late at night, running through the choreography from _On Love: Eros_ alone. Over and over and over again, like if he can fully inhabit the character of the femme fatale, he might feel less broken.

He takes to hiding from Victor, to avoid dealing with the pressure of his free skate, to avoid the guilt that he _still_ doesn’t understand what it means to desire someone. Victor, to his credit, doesn’t let Yuuri hide for long.

“What do you want me to be to you?” he asks Yuuri one morning, as they sit side by side on the beach. He rattles off options – a brother, a friend, a lover – and the last one makes Yuuri want to jump out of his skin, because deep down, he can admit to himself that he does long to have Victor close… But the idea of having him _that_ close, that Victor might bear witness to Yuuri’s cluelessness, his incompetence, in so intimate a way…

“Victor,” he all but yelps, “all I want is for you to be yourself.”

Beautiful, infuriating Victor, who Yuuri has aspired to be like his entire life. Who came here, spent time in Yuuri’s home, because he saw _something_ in Yuuri. He still doesn’t know what it was, but he thinks with more time, maybe he can be the skater Victor expects him to be. He can be the _person_ Victor expects him to be.

All he needs to do is try to be less afraid, first.

“I kept my distance because I didn’t want you to see my shortcomings,” he says, flushing from shame. “I… there are some things I don’t really know how to express, yet. But. I’ll make it up to you with my skating.”

Victor says nothing to Yuuri’s declaration, at least at first.

“All right,” he finally says, holding out his hand. “Then I won’t go easy on you. That’s how I show my love.”

A warm, late spring wind sweeps through silver hair, bangs parting so Yuuri can see Victor’s face, open, finally showing him a shred of understanding. Victor is smiling so broadly that Yuuri can see that he has dimples, and his breath catches.

Something happens between them, that morning on the beach. It will take Yuuri months before he’s able to put words to the feeling. But from then on, it feels like the gap between himself and Victor is less of a chasm, that they’ve both taken tentative steps toward one another, their hands reaching for one another’s.

 

\--

 

Victor’s pedestal erodes with the slow passage of time.

It’s difficult to keep idolizing someone to the extent Yuuri had done, he considers, when fighting them for the bathroom in the mornings; or when they bend over and you can see the thinning spot in their hair; or when you catch them singing Beyoncé, badly off-key and with a thick Russian accent, to their dog in the evenings.

“I can see your halo, halo, halo,” Victor croons, holding Makkachin’s front paws while the dog smiles lovingly at him. Yuuri, watching from around the corner, bites back his own smile.

Each of these moments is more precious than gold to Yuuri. They’re proof, glorious proof, that Victor Nikiforov is as human as he is.

Victor still has an innate grace to his movements, one that he wears too naturally to be an act. He’s still almost unbearably charming. But those heated, uncomfortable moments from their first few weeks together are gone, replaced with long afternoons spent by the seaside where they jog together, or play with Makkachin in the surf, or even sit shoulder to shoulder and talk. At first, Victor talks while Yuuri listens, too in awe to break past his usual reserve. But after that first day on the beach, he finds it easier to talk to Victor. To reveal little bits of himself, the way the other man had demanded that first day in Hasetsu.

His closeness had felt like an imposition back then, like the girl from Detroit shoving herself into his space. Now, it feels like Victor has earned those pieces of himself, somehow. No, more than that… they’re things Yuuri _wants_ to give Victor, regardless of whether he’s done anything to earn them.

Victor is still physical with him, too. There’s a weird moment one night in the onsen when Victor helps him stretch, his bare hands skimming over Yuuri’s bare flesh, and by the end Yuuri’s shaking from the intimacy of it, much too much, much too fast. But outside of that, Victor’s closeness starts to feel more natural. Leaning against Yuuri as they eat dinner together. Hugging him when he lands a quad Salchow. Playfully scrubbing Yuuri’s hair clean of saltwater after an afternoon at the beach, an action Yuuri reciprocates with a giddy swooping in his stomach. And again, they feel less like something Yuuri has grown to tolerate, and more like something he wants for its own sake.

It’s a slow, tentative dance. Yuuri can feel himself inching forward, in his cautious way, taking baby steps into Victor’s space, reaching. And Victor responds in the same way, running his hands gently along the cracks Yuuri has left in his defenses, until they’re circling each other in the most delicate of waltzes.

The tipping point, at least for Yuuri, is the photoshoot for this season’s short program poster. (Of course it is, isn’t it? Doesn’t it all come back to that damn _Eros_ routine?) Victor helps Yuuri get ready in his bedroom, buttoning the costume up the back with reverence. Yuuri extends a comb to Victor almost without thinking, and Victor takes it, smiling that bow-shaped smile that makes Yuuri feel warm inside.

Victor’s fingers are gentle through Yuuri’s hair, sweeping it back from his face. Yuuri closes his eyes briefly, enjoying the swirl of fingertips against his scalp as Victor smooths it back with a bit of gel. It’s nice, being close with him like this. Soothing.

His eyes slide open to study their reflection in the mirror, and he sees Victor smiling at the top of Yuuri’s head, a kind of secret smile that’s impossibly fond. _This is what lovers look like_ , whispers the part of Yuuri’s brain that’s been swamped with images like this since he was a child, the woman at her dressing table while the man fastens the necklace behind her neck. _This is what lovers do._

When Victor had first used the word “lover” with him, that day at the beach, it had sounded so… wrong. It had created an unwelcome association in his mind with Victor’s earlier failed seduction attempts, with men fucking in the back of a pickup truck. Something physical that Yuuri has never seen the appeal of.

But now…

 _Koibito_ is the word his mind whispers, looking at him and Victor in the mirror. His native language captures the nuance of his thoughts in the way that English just can’t, with “boyfriend” being too frivolous and “lover” being too physical. _Koibito_ indicates a deep understanding, a closeness. Kinship that goes beyond a shared profession, or their student-coach relationship. Goes well beyond friendship to a level Yuuri has never wanted with anyone before, a form of intimacy he thinks he and Victor could have.

He not only wants that emotional connection, he realizes with a bit of a jolt in the pit of his stomach. He _craves_ it. Wants to be the only person Victor looks at like that, wants to be the one Victor relies on when he struggles. He’s conflated that intimacy with sex for so long, being desperate for one while having no interest in the other. But aren’t they supposed to be the same thing?

It’s too much, looking at the their reflections, fighting the tide of emotions and confusion and _want_ that rise in his chest, and he doesn’t even realize that tears have sprung to his eyes until Victor looks up, their eyes meeting in the mirror, and says in alarm, “Yuuri, what’s wrong?”

The tears spill over, and he rushes to wipe his eyes.

“N-nothing,” he manages, tamping down on the lid before he boils over. “I’m just… very happy you’re here.”

If Victor is confused by his words, he doesn’t show it. Just gives Yuuri’s shoulder a squeeze, his touch lingering before he goes back to fixing Yuuri’s hair. Yuuri keeps his eyes shut, taking calming breaths so he can get through this photoshoot in one piece.

He can sort through this mess later.

 

\--

 

Three days after the photoshoot, he texts Phichit to ask him what a crush feels like.

He immediately feels childish for having to ask at the age of _twenty-fucking-three_ , but the urge to keep Victor close hasn’t subsided since his revelation at the mirror, has in fact grown terrifyingly _stronger_ , and so he hits send before he can talk himself out of it. He doesn’t expect an immediate reply; but then again, he’s constantly underestimating the extent to which Phichit is glued to his phone.

 

 _> >omg _(╯°□° **）** ╯︵ ┻━┻  
_> >you’re finally admitting to it  
__> >you love viknik_ _σ(_ ≧ _ε_ ≦ｏ _)_ _σ(_ ≧ _ε_ ≦ｏ _)_

 

Yuuri can’t help but cringe at the nickname, which Phichit came up with one night while sleep-deprived and has never been able to stop using. (Yuuri might also be cringing at how transparent he is.)

 

> _PHICHIT_. _Just answer the question._

 

A brief, exasperated pause, before new messages appear on his phone, rapidfire.

 

 _> > _ **_ლ_ ** _(_ **ಠ** 益 **ಠ** ****_ლ_  
_> >fine_  
_> >well_  
>>uhhhhh for me it’s like you think they’re cute  
_> >and you get nervous around them  
_ _> >usu how it goes lol_

 

Yuuri considers this. Thinking Victor is cute… _is_ Victor “cute”? Yuuri’s always considered him beautiful, a feeling that’s only grown _more_ acute, not less, since Victor moved in with him. Was that the same thing? As far as the second thing went, well. Yuuri was nervous around _everyone_. Strangers, rinkmates, even his own family sometimes. If that were the only criterion, then Yuuri would have a crush on _everybody on the planet Earth._

He used to be beyond nervous around Victor. Is he still? Yuuri texts a quick follow-up to Phichit before he can overthink it.

 

> _What if you’re nervous around everybody_ _except_ _them?_

 

He taps his phone nervously against his thigh, waiting for his friend to respond. His phone vibrates after a minute or so.

 

_> >then u adopt 5 dogs together _

 

Phichit follows up this last piece of sage advice with several images of poodles, probably from Google Images. One is actually of Makkachin, though it’s several years old; either it’s a coincidence, given that Makkachin is one of the world’s most famous poodles, or his best friend is legitimately trying to torture him.

His phone buzzes again, three times in quick succession, and in spite of how his stomach is churning, Yuuri looks at Phichit’s latest messages.

 

>> _tbh if you think it’s a crush then it’s probably a crush??_ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
_> >things will happen naturally dw abt it  
__> >sabai sabai <33_

 

Yuuri groans, pressing his face into his pillow like he can suffocate in it. Talking to Phichit has clarified a thing or two, at least. Too bad it hasn’t made Yuuri feel any better.

 

\--

 

September rolls around much too quickly, and with it comes the Chugoku-Shikoku-Kyushu Championship.

It’s humiliating to skate against high schoolers when just last year, Yuuri had been up against Victor Nikiforov himself. It’s even worse when he draws first skate. But most nerve-wracking of all is when Victor pulls him close, cameras flashing in the distance, and he breathes the dreaded words into the shell of Yuuri’s ear: _Seduce me with everything you have._

He means it to help focus and reassure Yuuri. And it works, at least at first. He runs through his step sequences, knowing that Victor had liked _this_ in practice, and he’d praised him for _that_ just last week. He doesn’t stop to look, but he can feel Victor’s eyes on him, and hopes he’s doing enough to keep them there.

But the second half is rougher, because jumps have always made him nervous, and because Victor’s words are still swarming in his head. “Seduce me”. Yuuri _might_ be willing to admit, at least to himself, to having a crush on Victor. To wanting to be close, to be held by him. Maybe, to kiss him. But none of that adds up to _seduction_. Does he want his skin on Victor’s skin? Can he even imagine it? Would he know how to persuade Victor to allow it?

He doesn’t find himself overwhelmed with _want_ at the thought of Victor pressed against him, panting, like the men in the videos. At best, he finds that he might not mind it, if Victor asked him.

The thought that after _everything,_ he’s still _indifferent_ to the idea of having sex with _Victor Nikiforov_ makes Yuuri overrotate his quad Salchow, stumbling. His combination jump at the end does no better.

 _End it!_ he thinks, frantic, barely cognizant of how the program’s story is supposed to conclude. _Just let it end!_

It does, finally, and Yuuri wraps his arms around himself, cheeks flushed from exertion. Dizzy, he looks toward Victor.

His coach is smiling, applauding, but it’s clear he’s not impressed.

The judges, meanwhile, are a completely different story, giving Yuuri a score nearly ten points higher than his previous personal best. Praising him for being able to perform something he doesn’t know how to feel.

What the _hell_.

 

\--

 

On nights when Yuuri hasn’t been too tired, he’s gone back to researching eros.

He stopped visiting porn sites a while ago, giving _that_ up as a lost cause. In fact, he’s given up trying to understand sex at all, since he was clearly born with the sex drive of a potato.

Philosophy, of all things, has been more help than even the most blistering erotica. He finds a book about the apparent “machinic eros” of his home country, studies the Freudian notion of love as a creative force. He reads C.S. Lewis, though he ends up wrinkling his nose at those more Puritanical notions. He even finally caves and started reading about Plato’s so-called “platonic eros,” which is less about friends-with-benefits (as he’d assumed) and more akin to understanding the inner beauty of a person, being inspired by it. The desire to possess something beautiful.

He doesn’t understand all the ideas he reads; but in some, there’s a thread of recognition there regardless. It reminds Yuuri of how he’d felt, all those years, when Victor had been little more than an image on his wall. An image of beauty he was forever reaching for. And even now, as Victor has become more and more real to Yuuri, that longing has only become more acute. Like the longer Yuuri looks at Victor, the more he finds out about him, the more beautiful he appears. Less like the glossy photographs on his walls and more like an Impressionist painting, complete with messy brushstrokes and splotches of color. A vibrant, stunning masterpiece.

“ _To love the good signifies to desire to possess it forever_.” This is the line running through Yuuri’s head as he stands in front of the press, explaining his theme for the season.

“Victor is the first person I’ve ever wanted to hold onto,” he tells the crowd, and something blossoms in his chest as he finally says it out loud. “There isn’t one clear name for this feeling… but I’ve decided to call it ‘love’.”

Eros is, in its most basic form, a possessive love. And whatever word Yuuri wants to put to his feelings for Victor, he only knows one thing:

He is too wonderful, too precious, for Yuuri to ever let him go.

 

\--

 

There are two things that immediately stand out to Yuuri when they arrive in Beijing.

One, Victor is actually nervous, in a way he wasn’t in Kyushu. He’s clingier than normal, gets irresponsibly drunk the night before the short program, and he won’t _shut up_ , rambling more than Yuuri’s ever heard him do. Perhaps it’s some combination of the larger venue, not to mention the way Victor’s former coach completely brushed him off as someone _playacting_ as coach. It makes Yuuri want to do his best, if only to reassure Victor that he hasn’t been a waste of time.

Two, half the world seems utterly convinced that he and Victor are fucking.

Victor’s old rinkmates from women’s singles seem to think that his coach left the sport solely to bed Yuuri, if their demands that Victor dump him are anything to go by. Chris, who lives for salacious gossip anyway, remarks on the firmness of Yuuri’s ass and makes a comment about the “training” his “master” is giving him – an innuendo Yuuri certainly doesn’t miss, even if he lets it slide. Interviewers and commentators are more polite, but they wonder aloud about the ways in which Victor – more specifically _living_ with Victor – has “inspired” Yuuri’s short program.

Even _Phichit_ seems to think he’s sleeping with Victor. There’s the photo he posted to Instagram from the hot pot restaurant: a naked, flirty Victor hanging all over Yuuri, Phichit looking amused and scandalized in the foreground. There’s also the _smirk_ on his face when he asks the next morning, “Sooooo. Has Victor recovered yet?” in a way that suggests he’s talking about something other than a massive hangover.

Half the world thinks that he and Victor are having sex. Which means that half the world must blame Yuuri for Victor’s retirement from the ice. Must hate him for keeping their champion all to himself.

Huh.

…Well. He can work with that.

It’s meaningless, though, unless Victor is watching him more closely than the judges. Victor, who knows they aren’t sleeping together, but who Yuuri still want to take with him out on the ice, somehow. A good luck charm of sorts. He laces his fingers with Victor’s rinkside, presses his forehead against his coach’s, breathes his air.

“Don’t ever take your eyes off me,” he whispers, swallowing the last of his nerves. Victor’s fingers are warm as they cling to his. His breath has the faintest scent of the coffee. He doesn’t even seem willing to _blink_ , let alone look away.

Yuuri takes the memory of that closeness onto the ice with him, the warmth of Victor’s hand, and uses it to give him strength. He dances his companion to Victor’s story of the Casanova and feels his coach’s gaze track him all the while.

He’s shocked when he manages to shatter his personal best yet again, but Victor doesn’t seem to be.

“Tell me that didn’t feel good out there,” he breathes into Yuuri’s ear, so the cameras in the kiss and cry can’t record them. He’s all but draped himself over Yuuri again, and Yuuri knows he’s just spent the last two and a half minutes telling the world, through his skates, the story they want to hear; weaving the saga about this chubby Japanese kid seducing their god and spiriting him away. Has just loudly broadcast his desire to keep Victor for himself.

But he can’t lie to Victor.

“Honestly?” he murmurs. “I just… I hoped people felt good watching me.”

 _I hoped_ you _liked it,_ he doesn’t say. _I don’t care about the rest of them. I wouldn’t be here at all if not for you._

Whether or not Victor can pick up on that particular nuance, he isn’t sure. He hears a breathless chuckle anyway.

“Of course they’d feel good after being treated to that little display,” he says, and Yuuri thinks he feels Victor press a kiss into his hair. “You’re incredible out there, you know that?”

Yuuri knows. He’s gotten too good at playing this particular role.

He just wishes Victor could see him as incredible off the ice, too.

 

\--

 

Victor kisses him after the free skate, and it’s like the world explodes.

When people talk about first love, they compare it to fireworks. Bursts of light and color illuminating the darkness for only a second before fading away, swallowed up by blackness. A pretty thing that inspires awe, but can never stay.

There are bursts of light flashing behind his eyelids as Victor kisses him; but Yuuri thinks at least part of that is the flash bulbs going on around them as the moment is captured for news outlets around the world. They fall to the ice together in a heap, as if in slow motion, and Victor cradles Yuuri’s head in his hands, protecting him from cracking his head on the hard frozen surface. Victor looks down at him with overwhelming warmth and tenderness, and Yuuri feels something inside himself reaching out, greedily, to take it.

The medal ceremony and interviews are a blur, cameras still clicking and Victor’s warmth still beside him. They don’t get a chance to speak alone until they’re in the elevator in the hotel, heading back to the room they share.

Victor is the first to speak, leaning against the wall opposite him.

“Am I misreading things?”

Yuuri tears his eyes away from the display showing what floor they’re on, looking over at Victor. He’s a study in casualness, his posture relaxed, but Yuuri can still sense the tension radiating from him. Can tell that Victor is second-guessing himself in a way that Victor Nikiforov never does. Yuuri puts him out of his misery.

"No." Then: "That was my first kiss."

Victor blinks at him for a moment. Yuuri half expects Victor to laugh at him, all _how pathetic that you're almost twenty-goddamn-four years old and never kissed anybody._ But Victor just looks... surprised. Not mocking. Not pitying.

"It was?" Yuuri shrugs, suddenly tense. From the way Victor frowns, it's clear he's thinking something along the lines of what Yuuri is. First kisses in movies are always magical, accompanied with sweeping scores and cherry blossoms and… Yuuri has some concept of a white horse, though he's not sure why. Their crash on the ice, both of them falling through the air locked together, doesn't measure up to the romantic clichés.

They speak at the same time.

"I wish I'd made it better--"

"It was perfect."

Their eyes meet, and Victor laughs softly. His cheeks turn a lovely rose color that does something strange to Yuuri's chest.

"Well." Victor pushes himself off the wall, taking a few tentative steps toward Yuuri. "If you're interested... would you be willing to give me a chance to redeem myself anyway?"

Yuuri's about to open his mouth to say that it isn't necessary, that from what he remembers it was a very nice kiss, fierce and warm, equal parts congratulatory and protective; but then he realizes that Victor is trying to flirt with him. He realizes that he might actually _like_ it this time.

Oh. _Oh._

"I..."

There's a ding above them, and the elevator doors slide open, letting them out. They walk side by side down the hallway, back to the room, the earlier easy conversation gone. They get to the door and Yuuri fumbles with the keycard, sticking it into the slot.

"I mean it, you know, Yuuri." Victor leans his forearm onto the door, so he's leaning over Yuuri, his eyelids hooded. "You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how."

The purr of his voice makes it absolutely clear what he's suggesting, and just for a moment, Yuuri feels his face grow hot. Then the words click as familiar, words from a movie he and Phichit saw together, and he snorts.

"You did _not_ ," he says, leaning back a little, "just quote Rhett Butler at me."

Victor seems confused. "I did? I..." He pauses, then his eyes grow wide. "Oh. Oops.”

He hadn’t done it consciously. The fact that Victor doesn't even seem aware of what a romcom cliché he is makes Yuuri grow even fonder, somehow. He swoons against the wall, pretending to fan himself with his hand while fighting a grin.

"Oh, Rhett," he says in his best approximation of a Deep South accent, which is to say not a good approximation at all. "Oh, Ashley. I don't know nothin' about birthin' no baby."

"Yuuriiiiii…" Victor's actually pouting now, wincing in embarrassment. Victor Nikiforov, five-time world champion, _embarrassed_ , because of Yuuri’s teasing.

He hopes he never gets used to that.

He turns the handle, letting them both inside. The last time they were in here, Yuuri was going through one of the worst anxiety attacks of his life, literally pinned to the bed by Victor's body in an ill thought-out attempt to get him to sleep. Being back here... the room looks different, now that they've kissed. Now that there's no way to ignore what Victor wants.

He stares at his single bed, separated by a few scant feet from the identical one Victor slept in the night before. Victor follows his gaze, then looks back at Yuuri.

"Ah... you must be tired," he finally says, offering Yuuri one of those camera smiles he hates so much. "You've barely slept in two days, and today in the garage..."

Yuuri doesn't know what makes him do what he does next. Maybe it's the way Victor so clearly pities him, or the way he tries to hide his disappointment that Yuuri hasn't immediately gone for his belt. Maybe it's Yuuri's deep-seated desire to be what Victor wants, to make up for all his other shortcomings. Maybe it's the way Victor offers that false, plastic smile, so different from the one Yuuri wants to see again.

But regardless of the reason, Yuuri steels himself, reaches up to touch Victor's cheek, and guides him down to press his lips against his.

It's different from the first. Their first kiss went by so quickly, something that will live longer on film than it has on Yuuri's skin. This one is more tentative, softer, an echo of the dance between them that's lasted for all these months. Victor gasps a little under his touch, lips parting, and as he kisses back all Yuuri can think is, oh. _This_ is why people write songs about this stuff.

Victor's hands come to hold Yuuri, so gently it seems like he thinks he'll break, and Yuuri grabs Victor's tie in response, pulling him down, pulling him closer. He has no idea what he's doing, only that Victor's hands on his back, his hair between Yuuri's fingers, Yuuri’s lip held gently between Victor’s teeth... it's _good_ , it makes _sense_ , and for the first time Yuuri thinks that maybe he could push himself to try harder for Victor’s sake, he could do more, he could _be more_ , he could--

But no sooner has the thought crossed his mind than Victor pulls back, just a fraction, leaning his forehead against Yuuri's as they both breathe heavily.

"Yuuri..." Victor's tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Yuuri realizes, suddenly, that both of them are shaking. "We should… take this slow.” He says it like he doesn’t believe there’s a chance it might stall out thanks to Yuuri’s reticence, and he thinks he loves Victor all the more for it.

"We don’t have to," Yuuri insists, reaching inside himself for some of that Eros confidence that comes so easily during his routine. But he doesn't move his hands from where they're woven in Victor's soft, silvery hair. He's close enough to feel Victor breathe, and he's surprised to find that it makes his heart pound, knowing how close he is.

Victor opens and shuts his mouth a few times, then finally shakes his head.

"Not tonight," he says, and strokes the back of his knuckle along Yuuri's cheek. "Look at you. Falling asleep on your feet."

"N-no," Yuuri protests, but it's lost in an enormous yawn. Figures his post-panic attack exhaustion would hit him now, of all times. Victor smiles, a real smile this time, his hands still reverent on Yuuri's face.

"We'll go to bed," he decides, even though it's still early in the evening. "Help me push the beds together, will you?"

He pulls away to start moving the furniture. Yuuri can't help freezing up, less brave now that Victor's mouth is no longer on his. "I... I thought we were going to sleep?"

"We are. And I'd like to hold you when we do." Victor looks over his shoulder. "May I?"

Well, Yuuri can hardly deny him that, especially when he finds he wants it too.

The reality of the situation hits him much later, when he wakes in the middle of the night, disoriented now that his sleep schedule is completely out of whack. It's pitch black in the room, Victor a warm, solid presence at his back. He feels Victor's breath tickle the back of his neck, feels his arm slung casually over Yuuri's waist.

It's comfortable like this. Exactly like this. Yuuri thinks he might love _this_.

But the thought of what two people are supposed to do in bed together, people like him and Victor who are bonded so closely and who kiss like their hearts are on fire... that makes him dread the tiny space between his back and Victor's chest. He pictures, more vividly than ever before, Victor yanking him close to him and refusing to let go. Victor, flipping Yuuri onto his back and looming over him with that buttery grin Yuuri still has memorized from their first weeks together. Victor's hands wandering inside his clothes, seeking something Yuuri has no idea how to give.

It won't be as public a failure as bombing the free skate might have been, but it'll be a failure nevertheless. A horrible wedge, driving Victor away. All Yuuri wants is for Victor to be himself, but Victor asked from the beginning for Yuuri to show him his _eros_ , to get comfortable with the idea of sex, and he doesn’t _know_ that _Eros_ is nothing but an act, doesn’t seem to see how deficient Yuuri is. Yuuri’s told him time and time again, in every way he knows how, and Victor still doesn’t _know_. And once he figures it out, he’ll go back to Russia, like none of this ever happened.

His thoughts are a bullet train straight into hell, the monster clawing its way back into his lungs, and before he knows it he’s out of bed, pounding on Phichit’s hotel room door at four in the morning.

“Yuuri?” Phichit is groggy when he answers the door, his accent thicker than ever, actually clutching a pillow to his chest as he scrubs at his eyes. “S wrong? If it’s a bad dream, you should’ve woken up Victor…”

Thinking of Victor asleep back in their room – their _bed_ – makes Yuuri’s stomach churn anew.

“I kissed Victor,” he blurts.

“I saw.” Phichit’s eyes are squinting against the light of the hallway. “The whole world did. Congrats. Again.”

Yuuri doesn’t stop there. His heart is pounding. “I think… I think I might love him.”

“Mm. _Jaaeo_.”

Phichit nods against the doorjamb, seeming to fall asleep mid-conversation. But Yuuri’s anxiety is closing in on him, and he knows this shouldn’t be a crisis but somehow it _is_ and he doesn’t know how to make anyone listen to him, especially when he can’t seem to find the words to explain his predicament—

“I don’t want to have sex with him,” Yuuri confesses, and it feels like surrender. “I don’t… I don’t think I want to have sex with anybody.”

Phichit’s eyes slide open. He’s about to say something else, probably something similarly dismissive, but then Yuuri sees him take in Yuuri’s expression.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Yuuri nods stiffly, and Phichit stands aside. “Let’s see if we can find some tea in here.”

 

\--

 

There’s no tea provided by the hotel, but Phichit digs up some tea bags crumpled up in a side pocket of his suitcase, a brand of peppermint tea they used to buy in Detroit. Yuuri’s never liked this flavor, and it’s a little stale, but it’s familiar in the same way that Phichit is, and Yuuri finds himself spilling everything to Phichit before the cup’s half gone. How he really felt about the posters. How he really feels about the _Eros_ program. Everything he feels – or _can’t_ feel – for Victor.

Phichit listens, sits with him, hugs him. “I’m so sorry about all the teasing,” is the first thing he says when Yuuri finally stops for breath. “All this time, I thought you were just in denial about how you felt, or that you were shy. I didn’t know you didn’t have words for it.”

And he not only accepts Yuuri. He tells him that his feelings have a _name_. That roughly one percent of the world’s population — seventy million people — feels the same way he does about sex and romance.

Asexuality. He’s never heard of it before. But the more Phichit explains what it is, the more he thinks he might fall somewhere along that spectrum.

“You really are Japan’s ace,” Phichit jokes once Yuuri’s finally calmed down, and he lets himself laugh.

It’s just past sunrise by the time he emerges from Phichit’s room; it feels like their conversation has lasted years. Yuuri hasn’t felt so light in months, finally being able to put words to how he feels.

It might still drive Victor away. He might not accept that a relationship with Yuuri won’t include the physical side of things that Yuuri knows Victor expects, even if he’s never said so. But no matter what Victor might say when he finds out, no matter how he reacts, Yuuri has to tell him the truth. Especially after last night.

And so he tells Victor, “I have to tell you something.” Nowhere near as scary as _we need to talk_ , but still showing that what he has to say is important. Victor’s only been awake for a few minutes, slowly coming back to life as Yuuri sits on the end of the bed, takeout cup from the café downstairs in his hand. One cream, four sugars. It was one of the first things he’d learned about Victor that he hadn’t read in a magazine.

Victor sits up in bed at his words, still groggy, hair mussed from the pillow. The black tank top he’d worn to bed is crooked on his shoulders.

“Can it wait until after breakfast?” he says, rubbing at his eyes. Yuuri thrusts the coffee cup under his nose, almost robotically, and Victor blinks down at it. “Wow. This is important, huh.”

Yuuri gulps. _Just tell him._ Like ripping off a bandage.

“I don’t want to have sex,” he says, and Victor pauses mid-sip.

“Um…” He swallows his mouthful of coffee. “That’s okay. Neither do I. I’d at least want a chance to brush my teeth first.”

“I mean, ever,” Yuuri clarifies, and immediately feels his face grow hot. “I mean, probably not? Maybe at some point in the future, or if you really wanted to we could _try_ it, or, I mean…”

He takes a deep breath, holding it for a moment, knowing he’s already snowballing a little.

“I’m asexual,” he says. It’s only his second time saying it, and it still clicks for him like nothing else ever has. “I’m pretty sure, anyway. I’m… I like you, Victor, very, very much. I like having you as my coach, and being so close with you, and… and I like kissing you, a lot. But I’ve never wanted to have sex with you. Or… or anyone.” He fixes his eyes on the pattern in the bedspread so he won’t have to see the disappointment on Victor’s face.

“Asexual,” Victor repeats. His tone is neutral.

“Not that I think sex is _gross,_ ” Yuuri goes on. He still doesn’t dare to look at Victor. “I just don’t think it’s… uh…” He runs over his long talk with Phichit in his mind, hoping he might find some way to explain it better. “It’s like… steamed broccoli?” he tries. “I don’t find it particularly exciting, but they say it’s good for you, so I’ll try it if you really—“

“No,” Victor says sharply, and Yuuri finds himself retreating as quickly as if Victor had shouted. “No, no, Yuuri. I would never touch you in a way you didn’t enthusiastically _want_.” He sounds disgusted at the very prospect.

That makes Yuuri feel a little better, but he curls inward anyway, hands gripping his elbows.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I tried as hard as I could, but… I can’t.”

“Tried?” Victor doesn’t sound angry, or disappointed. He sounds confused.

“You said… I needed to try harder?” Yuuri says with a wince. “After Hot Springs on Ice. That if I just gave it enough time…”

“Yuuri!” Victor bursts, and Yuuri jumps, unprepared for the outburst. “I’m sorry,” Victor apologizes quickly. “Just… that isn’t what I meant! I thought you were having trouble with the _program_ , that you needed to spend more time with the choreography and the story before you were more comfortable with it. It always takes me a while to get into a new program, and…” He pauses. “Yuuri, will you please look at me?”

Yuuri takes a deep breath, and looks up. Victor’s eyes are warm, his expression contrite.

“I’m so sorry, Yuuri.” He gently places his hand atop Yuuri’s where it’s clenched between them, and Yuuri feels himself relax a fraction. “I had no idea you’ve been feeling like this. I never wanted for you to feel like I was pressuring you, not for anything. Not for skating, and definitely not for this.”

He never has, now that Yuuri thinks of it. He’s always let Yuuri come to him, whether it’s asking for tips on how to land a quad flip or doing Yuuri’s hair for him before a competition. The fondness he feels for Victor overwhelms him in that moment, tears flooding his eyes almost before he can help himself.

“To be fair,” Yuuri says, “I’ve been pressuring myself a lot more than you have.”

“You always do,” Victor tuts, but it’s gentle. “I’ve never met anyone as hard on themselves as you are.” He traces circles with a fingertip on the back of Yuuri’s hand, and Yuuri exhales, slow and shaky, before lacing his fingers with Victor’s. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“I didn’t know how,” he admits. “I didn’t even know there was a word for it until this morning. I’ve felt this way my whole life, but… but I thought.” It’s hard to get the words out, and a tear slips out before he can stop it. Victor says nothing, but holds onto his hand a little tighter. “I thought I was… b-broken somehow. That I just had to… to work harder, to get over myself, so I could be like everyone else.”

“Oh, Yuuri,” Victor says. It sounds like his heart is breaking. He sets his coffee on the nightstand, opening his arms wide. Yuuri doesn’t think before going to him, curling against Victor’s chest as they grip each other tight, so tight. “My lovely Yuuri. I know what that’s like. I’m so, so sorry that you do, too.”

Yuuri says nothing at first, just holds Victor for a long, long moment. He lets himself breathe, feels something settle inside him.

“You do?” he finally asks, voice muffled against Victor’s chest. Victor sighs softly, and Yuuri twists to look up at him. A sad, distant smile has found its way onto Victor’s face.

“I’m not asexual,” he clarifies, “but working hard to feel something that you don’t think you know how to feel? I… I think I know a little something about that.”

Yuuri waits, and waits, for Victor to elaborate, but he never does. _What happened to you?_ he wants to ask, but he’d rather make the sadness leave Victor’s eyes. So he reaches up, poking his index finger into Victor’s cheek, where his dimples are supposed to go, in the hopes he might make it appear. Sure enough, Victor chuckles, his real smile making a reappearance, and he grins down at Yuuri, who feels himself smiling back.

“Oh, you should _not_ have done that,” he says with a gleam in his eye, and before Yuuri knows it, Victor’s tickling him, pinning him to the bed as his fingers dance along Yuuri’s ribs, under his arms, and soon they’re both laughing so hard they can hardly breathe. Yuuri kicks, playfully, at Victor’s ribs, and he finds himself looking up at clear blue eyes as he tries to catch his breath.

Victor’s leaning over him, his arms bracketing Yuuri’s torso as a hand brushes, awed, through Yuuri’s hair. His breath is warm on Yuuri’s face. 

“Is this okay?” he asks, voice hushed. Yuuri’s surprised to hear the question from Victor. He’d been about to ask the same thing. _Is it okay if I never want to have sex with you? Can you be happy like this?_

“Yes,” Yuuri says in reply, sinking his fingers into Victor’s arm, holding him in place. “We’ve… w-we’ve never done anything I haven’t wanted to do, Victor.”

Victor’s silver bangs fall to one side as he tilts his head, his expression open. “Then why are you so nervous?” If Yuuri wasn’t holding onto him, he thinks Victor might have pulled away.

“This is new to me,” Yuuri says with an apologetic smile. “I don’t just mean kissing, or…” He touches Victor’s cheek, hesitantly, and is surprised as Victor practically melts into the touch. “I didn’t think I’d ever feel this for anyone,” Yuuri admits. “This kind of thing never seemed… real to me.”

Romantic love had seemed like one of those things reserved for characters in his mother’s dramas for so many years. Something that sounded nice in theory, but not anything Yuuri had ever sought. Having it appear in his onsen out of the blue… He still can’t quite believe this is real.

“I know how you feel.” Victor is still holding him close. “You snuck up on me, Katsuki Yuuri.”

He thinks he might melt into the boxsprings. Victor’s done nothing but surprise Yuuri at every turn since he first saw him on the old television in the Ice Castle. The man holding him has gone from an image, to an ideal, to a breathing human, one who, in spite of everything, feels something for him.

It’s a beautiful thing that Victor’s just said to him, and he wants to cherish it. Cherish _him_.

He moves his thumb carefully over Victor’s mouth, brushing Victor’s lower lip. The way he’s feeling warms him from the inside, too big to be contained inside him. Too big not to be shared with the one who’s made him feel this way.

“If I asked you to kiss me,” Yuuri says, his mouth feeling very dry all of a sudden, “would that… would that be enough?”

Victor’s eyes meet his with that warm smile Yuuri loves so much. Corners of his mouth curling up, showing off the dimples that the cameras never get to see. It’s all the answer Yuuri thinks he needs, and then Victor bends down, just slightly, to press his lips softly against Yuuri’s. It’s reverent, like Yuuri is Victor’s dearest treasure, and Yuuri thinks he might cry at the tenderness of it.

When Yuuri thinks of eros, he thinks of flames curling the edges of newspaper, consuming until nothing is left. It’s the kind of love he still has no idea what to do with, a demand where refusal only means losing it altogether. This kiss is not a demand. It doesn’t consume, doesn’t take anything Yuuri isn’t freely giving.

 _I will be yours_ , Victor is saying with his lips, his hands, the deference of his body to Yuuri’s, _if only you will be mine._

It’s enough.

 _Yuuri_ is enough.

He has never experienced anything so beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> So, a few months back, I wrote this character study of Yuri Plisetsky called ["Storge"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10497810) that kind of blew up (at least per my standards), and it gave me the idea do a few more character studies that view the three main characters from _Yuri on Ice_ through the lens of the Four Loves (agape, eros, philia, and storge). 
> 
> This fic was always going to be Yuuri's piece of that puzzle.
> 
> A lot of Yuuri's journey to self-understanding in this fic very much reflects my own. I didn't hear the word "asexual" until I was 22, and didn't feel comfortable using that label for myself until I was 25. What's more, I'm still figuring out where exactly on the ace spectrum I am. Watching _Yuri on Ice,_ funnily enough, is what I like to refer to as my big "romantic awakening," which helped me realize that I might actually want romantic love for myself. A lot of Yuuri's experiences in this fic are drawn directly from my life, though I don't have a Victor. (Yet?? Haaaaa)
> 
> If there's enough interest (or I might just do it anyway), there may well be a part two of this fic. If this part illustrates how Yuuri comes to accept himself, part two is where Yuuri comes out (again), navigates his new relationship with Victor, and finishes out the Grand Prix series. I thought that I'd be able to fit in everything within 10k words, but it turned out I had a LOT more to say. 
> 
> I'm also planning a Victor-centric character study fic where Agape is the theme, because of reasons. And, as always, I have my [ongoing thief AU](http://archiveofourown.org/series/722889) if you're into fake identities, heists, and millennial idealism. 
> 
> I am, as always, [@phoenixrei](http://phoenixrei.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.


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